Abstract
This article explains the conservation-restoration intervention in the image of the Cristo de Ánimas de Ciegos, belonging to the Sacramental Brotherhood and Royal Fusion Brotherhoods of Malaga. The work is executed in carved wood
and polychrome and represents a dead Crucified. It has undergone various restorations and modifications, five interventions being documented, all carried out during the 20th century, specifically in 1913, 1931, 1939, 1952 and 1968.
In the research and conservation-restoration project carried out by the Andalusian Institute of Historical Heritage, it was possible to establish the differentiation between the various repolichrome interventions that the image had undergone during its material history. The polychrome surface, the result of the last restoration, carried out in 1968, was chromatically altered, preventing an adequate aesthetic reading of the image. In addition, the possibility of recovering the oldest polychrome of the image, of great technical and aesthetic quality, was confirmed.
The recovery of the oldest polychrome layer of the carving has allowed the work to obtain its maximum historical-artistic, aesthetic and cultural values. This supposes an enhancement of it, allowing the study of new hypotheses in relation to its material history that open up new lines of research regarding this image.